To go back to the introduction to
this series of professional development activities, clickhere

How do pupils progress in their problem solving?

In the previous activity you were asked to think about the
connections between higher-order thinking skills, problem solving
and rich tasks. In the next set of activities we want to think
about how we can support our pupils in problem solving

You will need the following resources:

We have based this activity on the National Strategy's
Primary Framework Assessment Guidelines . We are not asking you to think about assessment but about
process skills and progression. The guidelines are based on three
areas: problem solving, reasoning and communicating.

There are two parts to this task. There is no 'right answer' to
either part but the activities are designed to make you think
about:

the mathematical thinking and problem-solving skills you want
your learners to develop

the sorts of things your pupils will be doing

the development of thinking and problem-solving skills over
time (progression)

It is the discussion you have as you undertake the task which
is key. By making sense of phrases and describing what you mean by
them in your own words you will come to your own view about how
they inform what you are trying to help your pupils to learn.

First you will need a
set of the problem-solving cycle cards ( ProblemSolvingCycleCards.doc
) and of the progression cards ( ProgressionCards.doc ).
[The Progression Cards are based on lists for Levels 2, 3, 4 and 5
so you might like to think about what would come before L2 and
after L5.]

Lay the cycle cards out and then distribute the progression
cards amongst them. There will be quite a lot of discussion about
what some of these mean. Remember that there is no right answer and
a lot depends on your interpretation of a card's meaning. In the
end you should put each card under the heading that feels like the
'best fit'. Do not agonise for too long on each card - you can
change your mind at any time. When we did this task at NRICH we moved
things around quite a lot during the second part of the
task!

The second part of the
task is about ordering the cards under each of the five process
headings. The aim of this part of the task is for you to think
about progression. What would you expect learners at different
stages to be able to do? When we
did this task we found it useful to group cards that seemed to be
about similar things together before trying to order them. So, for
example, under Analysis-Reasoning we found a few cards that seemd
to be about 'organising' so we pulled these out and put them in
order .

The lists are not meant to be exhaustive so you might want to
add some cards of your own.

When you have finished the tasks you might find it useful to
refer to the progression list ( ProgressionCardList.doc
) as this will enable you to map what you have done to the Strategy
document.